Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Rodney William Whitaker, the mysterious mystery writer best known as Trevanian, the author of such international bestsellers as “The Eiger Sanction,” has died. He was 74.

Whitaker died Wednesday in the West Country of England of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

His 1972 blockbuster “The Eiger Sanction,” which was adapted as a 1975 movie starring Clint Eastwood, was Trevanian’s first and perhaps best-known novel. In it, art historian and sometime assassin Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood in the film) is sent to kill an enemy agent during a mountain climbing expedition on Switzerland’s majestic Eiger.

Some derided that novel and “The Loo Sanction” in 1973 as pale James Bond derivatives. The author considered them intentional Bond spoofs. Whatever they were, they sold millions of copies and established him as a must-read mystery writer.

Among the other Trevanian novels were cult-favorite “Shibumi” in 1979, the romantic “The Summer of Katya” in 1983, the western “Incident at Twenty-Mile” in 1998 and his last, the semi-autobiographical “Crazyladies of Pearl Street,” published in June.

For years, Whitaker studiously avoided interviews or publishers’ promotions that would reveal his actual identity. Many speculated that “Trevanian” was actually novelist Robert Ludlum, a rumor Whitaker put to rest.

In a rare interview, he told the New York Times Book Review in 1979 that he wrote “under five different names on several subjects: theology, law, aesthetics, film….”

The eclectic author, using the pseudonym Nicholas Seare, wrote the medieval parody “1339 or So … Being an Apology for a Pedlar,” published in 1975, and “Rude Tales and Glorious: The Account of Diverse Feats of Brawn and Bawd Performed by King Arthur and His Knights of the Table Round” in 1983.

An educator in communication and dramatic arts, Whitaker wrote nonfiction books under his own name. Among those was “The Language of Film” in 1970.

He also wrote under the names Benat LeCagot and Edoard Moran. Were there others? Even the staid comprehensive anthology Contemporary Authors noted: “It is difficult to determine how many works he has published with other names.”

His writing has been compared to that of Emile Zola, Bond’s creator Ian Fleming, Edgar Allan Poe and Chaucer. Unlike many popular mystery authors, Whitaker never turned out formulaic books.

Each seemed a separate and unique creation, linked only by what the Washington Post in 1983 described as “a consistently high level of craftsmanship, a certain playfulness of style and a pervasive message that things are not what they seem.”

A Times reviewer wrote of his Montreal-based 1976 Trevanian mystery: ” ‘The Main’ is as real and unsentimental as a good writer can make it — the characters believable, the exotic terrain drawn accurately and with a good deal of color, the search for the murderer making an otherwise episodic narrative taut and compelling…. This is a good book, one to go to bed with.”

LA Times
Robert Sheckley, a short story and novel writer who was among the first to fuse satire with science fiction, helping to create a subgenre some called “galactic humor,” has died. He was 77.

Sheckley, who had been fighting emphysema, died from complications of a brain aneurysm Dec. 9 at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said Ziva Kwitney, his former wife.

Considered a master of satire and irony, Sheckley also was one of the first science fiction writers to give mechanical devices the ability to think for humans, according to a 2003 feature in Locus, a magazine that covers science fiction news.

He wrote more than 15 novels and about 400 short stories, but the exact number is unknown. In the 1950s and ’60s, Sheckley was so productive that magazines required him to use a pseudonym to cut down on the number of times his byline appeared.

His fiction has been translated into 10 languages and is extremely popular in Eastern Europe.

Four of his stories were made into films. The best known is 1965’s “The 10th Victim,” starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. It was based on a 1953 story about a futuristic world in which game show contestants hunt and murder one another for cash.

“Immortality, Inc.,” a 1959 expansion of his first novel, presents the afterlife as scientifically proven but includes a capitalistic twist — travel requires the purchase of “Hereafter machines.” It was made into the 1992 movie “Freejack” with Mick Jagger and Anthony Hopkins. The other films were 1981’s “Condorman” and the 1983 French film “Le Prix du Danger,” based on the novel “The Prize of Peril.”

NY Times
Margaret Hodges, who filled bookshelves with retold legends and other books for young readers and with the awards she received for them, died on Tuesday at her home in Verona, Pa. She was 94.

Her death was announced by her son Arthur C. Hodges, who said two more of her books were to be published in the future.

Her most recent illustrated books of familiar stories include “Merlin and the Making of the King” (Holiday House, 2004), “The Wee Christmas Cabin” (Holiday House, early 2007) and “Moses” (Harcourt Brace, January 2007).

Mrs. Hodges’s other books still in print include “The Wave” (Houghton Mifflin, 1964), adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s “Gleanings in Buddha-Fields;” “Saint George and the Dragon: A Golden Legend” (Little, Brown, 1984), adapted from Spenser’s “Faerie Queen;” “The Kitchen Knight: A Tale of King Arthur” (Holiday House, 1990); “Saint Patrick and the Peddler” (Orchard Books, 1993); “Gulliver in Lilliput” (Holiday House, 1995); “Molly Limbo” (Atheneum, 1996); and “Up the Chimney” (Holiday House, 1998).

She wrote more than 50 books over 47 years. She edited other work, especially travel books for young people, before writing her first book, “One Little Drum” (Follet Publishing Company, 1958). Aimed at children 6 to 9 years old, it was based on the exploits of her own three sons.

Mrs. Hodges also wrote biographies and novels for children and young adults.

She was born Sarah Margaret Moore on July 26, 1911, in Indianapolis and graduated from Vassar in 1932, the year she married Fletcher Hodges Jr., a museum curator. She also received a master’s degree in library science in 1958 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology while working as a volunteer children’s librarian at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. She later was a story specialist for the Pittsburgh Public Schools and joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, from which she retired as a professor emerita in 1978.

While in Pittsburgh, she was a storyteller on the show “Tell Me a Story” on WQED-TV, a public television station, from the mid-1960’s to 1976.

Mrs. Hodges earned numerous literary honors, including the Caldecott Medal of the American Library Association in 1985 for “Saint George and the Dragon.”

Rooting about again we dug up a bit about a couple lovely little Roman holidays called Saturnalia and Juvenalia. Take a short read:

In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, slaves would become masters. Peasants were in command of the city. Business and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the fun.

Oh those wild and, note the term, hedonistic, Romans, eh?

Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra’s birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

And do you perhaps remember the shirt that saved young Frodo from being skewered like a wild boar in the Mines of Moria? Twas an undershirt woven by those rock loving Dwarves from Mithril and naturally you’ll want such a shirt so go here to buy yours.

Oh, but wait, back to the other story. Dig about if you will, but there is no recorded date for the birth of Jesus. Tsk. What to do? Early on Easter was the real celebration, but not everyone was paying attention during other parts of the year. Best come up with a new celebration, eh? You are spot-on with that idea, but Pope Julius I beat you to the punch by a few years and he chose December 25.

Naturally there is a purpose to all this. We know that secret yen of yours to run off and attend Santa School. We want you to do well in your History oral exams.

BTW Lou Rawls is not doing to well fighting a spreading cancer. We’ve thus added him to our On Deck page. We do wish him the best.

LA Times
John Spencer, an actor who received an Emmy Award for portraying the flawed but efficient chief of staff who anchored the large ensemble cast on NBC-TV’s “The West Wing,” died Friday morning. He was 58.

Spencer died after suffering a heart attack, said Ron Hofmann, his publicist. He said the actor had fallen ill at home and died at Olympia Medical Center in Los Angeles.

“We’re shocked and deeply saddened by the sudden death of our friend and colleague,” Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme, executive producers of “The West Wing,” said in a statement. “John was an uncommonly good man, an exceptional role model and a brilliant actor.”

On the Emmy-winning hourlong drama that began airing in 1999, Spencer’s character, Leo McGarry, is running for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Rep. Matthew Santos, played by Jimmy Smits.

Art sadly imitated life for Spencer. His “West Wing” character was chosen as a running mate despite a recent heart attack and a history of alcoholism. The actor openly acknowledged that he had struggled with alcohol addiction since high school

In a statement, Smits said, “I am honored to call John Spencer a friend, and his death is a loss that will be felt for a long time to come. Working with him was a privilege…. John was a true pillar of a man.”

The death of an actor while a series is still in production challenges the producers and writers to find a logical plot line for the character’s sudden absence. “The West Wing” will have to deal with the loss because the fictional election is central to the story line.

David E. Kelley, a writer and executive producer on “L.A. Law” when Spencer joined that show in 1990, was too upset to speak but issued this statement: “We are all deeply saddened.”

James Mangold, who directed Spencer in the 1997 film “Cop Land,” said he first noticed the “brilliant” actor when he played a street-smart attorney on “L.A. Law” on NBC.

“He was a kind, sweet, funny man … a man who made your words come to life in ways you would never expect,” Mangold said.

NY Times
Jack Anderson, whose investigative column once appeared in more than 1,000 newspapers with 40 million readers, won a Pulitzer Prize and prompted J. Edgar Hoover to call him “lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures,” died yesterday. He was 83.

The cause was Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Anderson’s daughter Laurie Anderson-Bruch told The Associated Press.

Mr. Anderson was a flamboyant bridge between the muckrakers of the early decades of the 20th century and the battalions of investigative reporters unleashed by news organizations after Watergate. He relished being called “the Paul Revere of journalism” for his knack for uncovering major stories first almost as much as he enjoyed being at the top of President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list.

His journalistic reach extended to radio, television and magazines, and his scoops were legion. They included the United States’ tilt away from India toward Pakistan during Bangladesh’s war for independence, which won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1972.

Another was his linking of the settlement of an antitrust suit against ITT by the Justice Department to a $400,000 pledge to underwrite the 1972 Republican convention. Still another was revealing the Reagan administration’s efforts to sell arms illegally to Iran and funnel the proceeds to anti-Communist forces in Central America.

In what was the nation’s most widely read, longest-running political column, Mr. Anderson broke stories that included the Central Intelligence Agency’s enlisting of the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro, the savings and loan scandal, Senator Thomas J. Dodd’s loose ethics, and the mystery surrounding Howard Hughes’s death.

He liked to say that he and his staff of eager investigators did daily what Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did just once when they dug out the truth of the Watergate scandal.

But his bombastic, self-congratulating style, abbreviated exegeses and a blistering moral outrage fueled both by his Mormon upbringing and unabashed theatrical flair caused some to question his gravity.

When he made a mistake on a big story, it could reverberate mightily. In 1972, he had to apologize to Senator Thomas Eagleton for reporting on the radio about drunken-driving arrests that he could not later authenticate. Mr. Eagleton had to withdraw as the Democratic Party nominee for vice president in the face of disclosures that he had received psychiatric treatment.

Mr. Anderson’s decidedly roguish techniques included eavesdropping, spiriting off classified documents, rifling through garbage (Mr. Hoover’s, in particular) and sometimes blatant threats - methods he defended as justified in his lifetime campaign to keep government honest. His printing of verbatim transcripts of the secret Watergate grand jury thwarted Mr. Nixon’s efforts to stonewall the scandal by hiding behind grand jury secrecy.

Not only was Mr. Anderson on Nixon’s notorious list, but G. Gordon Liddy, a Watergate burglar, plotted his murder.

Outside of a small circle of friends that is. Happy Birthday Phil Ochs. Alas poor Phil hit his stride just as another folk singer was on the rise. Young Phil seemed to forever play second folk guitar to young Bob Dylan. Mr. Ochs never made much of a commercial impact, but had a small moment of glory when one of his songs was banned for suggesting that “smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer”. Maybe. Maybe not. However, we certainly know of more than a few people who spent many hours in the scientific pursuit of a answer to that riddle. Oh, and Mr. Ochs apparently finally became just dog tired of it all and committed suicide by hanging himself. Supposedly being robbed and strangled in Africa had something to do with losing his voice and ultimately his suicide.

December 19th for $100 Alex. “Also on this day let us give a Hippy Birdy to what member of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band?” “We do believe that would be John McEuen” Alex. Dear John plays the banjo, fiddle, mandolin and that other six string thingy and seems to have been playing with the group for freakin’ forever man!

Zal Yanovsky (Lovin’ Spoonful). Yikes. One moment part of the “Do You Believe In Magic?” time and the next he’s voted out of the Flower Power Era. He turned up in Canada as the owner of Chez Piggy - a fine eatery in Kingston. Alas poor Zally died of a heart attack at 58 on December 16, 2002.

Oh, its Leonid Brezhnev’s birthday too, but, as far as we know anyway, he was never part of any band…unless you consider the KGB some flavor of a band…

Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more?

I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you ~~ “I’d Love To Change The World”, Ten Years After

LA Times
Mary Jackson, 95, a character actress best remembered for portraying Miss Emily Baldwin on the CBS series “The Waltons,” died Saturday of complications from Parkinson’s disease at her home in Hollywood, said her assistant, Woody Roll.

Jackson’s television and movie career, which began in 1952, spanned five decades and dozens of roles.

In the movies, she played Jane Fonda’s mother in “Fun With Dick and Jane” (1977) and one of the nuns in “Airport” (1970). She portrayed the great-grandmother on NBC’s “Parenthood” in 1990, and made her last TV appearance in “A Walton Easter,” a 1997 reunion movie on CBS.

Born in 1910 in Milford, Mich., Jackson graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University in 1932. She briefly taught school before acting in summer stock and on stage in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles

NY Times
William Proxmire, a political maverick during 32 years in the Senate who crusaded against government waste and irritated presidents and lawmakers from both parties because of his contempt for the mutual back-scratching most politicians engage in, died yesterday in Sykesville, Md., about 40 miles from Washington. He was 90.

He died at the Copper Ridge Nursing Home, said Mindy Brandt, a spokeswoman for the home. Ms. Brandt said she could provide no further details.

Mr. Proxmire had Alzheimer’s disease and had been out of the spotlight for more than a decade. He left the Senate in 1989.

A Democrat from Wisconsin, he was chairman of the Banking Committee and was involved in many important legislative battles, most notably successful drives to win Senate approval of a treaty outlawing genocide and rejection of money for a supersonic transport plane.

But he was best known for his Golden Fleece Awards, which he announced in monthly press releases to call attention to what he believed to be frivolous government spending. An award, for instance, went to the National Science Foundation in 1975 for spending $84,000 to learn why people fall in love.

Mr. Proxmire is also remembered for his regimen of daily exercise (in his prime, he jogged nearly 10 miles a day), his spartan diet, his hair transplants and face lift, his refusal to accept campaign donations or reimbursements for travel expenses and his string of not missing roll-call votes, which lasted more than 20 years.

Mr. Proxmire was first elected to the Senate in 1957 to fill the unexpired term of the late Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican who was censured for reckless attacks on those he accused of being communists or fellow travelers. Although he spent only a few hundred dollars on his campaigns, all of it out of his own pocket, Mr. Proxmire was easily re-elected five times.

His Golden Fleece Award, to gain publicity for his crusade against wasteful spending, became “as much a part of the Senate as quorum calls and filibusters,” said Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the Democratic leader during part of Mr. Proxmire’s career.

Speaking of the National Science Foundation’s grant on falling in love, Mr. Proxmire said such a study was better left to “poets and mystics, to Irving Berlin, to thousands of high school and college bull sessions.”

Another Golden Fleece Award went to the National Institute for Mental Health, which spent $97,000 to study, among other things, what went on in a Peruvian brothel. The researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy.

The Federal Aviation Administration also felt Mr. Proxmire’s wrath, for spending $57,800 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses, paying special attention to the “length of the buttocks” and how their knees were arranged when they were seated. Other Fleece recipients were the Justice Department, for spending $27,000 to determine why prisoners wanted to get out of jail, and the Pentagon, for a $3,000 study to determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas in the rain.

NY Times
Darrell Russell, a former standout defensive lineman for the University of Southern California and in the National Football League, whose promising career was derailed by drugs, was killed in a high-speed car crash here early Thursday. He was 29.

Russell was a passenger in a car driven by his former U.S.C. teammate Michael Paul Bastianelli that went out of control about 6 a.m. and hit a curb, a tree, a newsstand, a fire hydrant, a light pole, another tree and an unoccupied transit bus, Los Angeles Police Lt. Paul Vernon said.

Both Russell and Bastianelli, 29, were unconscious when firefighters arrived. Russell died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Bastianelli died at U.C.L.A. Medical Center.

Russell last played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The 6-foot-5, 325-pound Russell, the No. 2 overall pick by the Oakland Raiders in the 1997 draft, had a promising start in the N.F.L. before substance-abuse problems derailed his career. He had 28.5 sacks in five seasons with Raiders, making the Pro Bowl in 1998 and 1999.

He was suspended three times for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy, and his career never recovered. After being released by the Raiders at the end of his second suspension, he played briefly for the Washington Redskins in 2003, and was released in training camp by Tampa Bay the next year.

Russell’s first suspension came after he failed a drug test, forcing him to miss four games of the 2001 season. The N.F.L. does not disclose details of substance-abuse violations. The league’s policy covers a wide range of issues, including the illegal use of drugs and the abuse of alcohol, prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs.

Russell was suspended again in January 2002 for testing positive for the club drug Ecstasy. He was released by the Raiders in October 2003, shortly after being reinstated by the league.

Russell talked about his problems this summer at the N.F.L.’s rookie symposium, which is used to teach new players what pratfalls to avoid in their careers.

“He was trying to teach people that, ‘I am a prime example of what not to do in certain situations,’ ” said Calvin Branch, a teammate of Russell’s on the Raiders.

Russell signed with the Redskins and played sparingly the rest of the 2003 season. He then joined Tampa Bay in the off-season but was released in training camp. He tested positive for drugs again and was suspended indefinitely by July 2004.

And no, we don’t mean Camper Van Beethoven, we mean Happy Birthday Ludwig. Actually the records show young Ludwig was baptized on December 17, 1770 in the church of St Remigius, Bonn, but custom was to perform baptisims within 24 hours of birth so December 16 is a safe bet.

And what is your favorite Beethoven piece? (No, not “Take the Skinheads Bowling”, that’s the Camper group again). Perhaps “Fur Elise”? Perhaps the riveting 9th and the ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Tone!’? “(I Was Born In A) Laundromat”?

We ODDones like to turn the eight-track volume up to 10 and play first the “Emperor Concerto” followed immediately by “Pictures of Matchstick Men” whilst we zoom about in our ODDrover searching for a rainbow.

And since we are roving about…rumor has arrived at our Galactic HQ that Duke University deployed many an iPod to the Student Body. Many and varied outcomes this did have and perhaps one of the most significant was that student to student conversation on buses and such decreased dramatically. Seems everyone was wired into their own thing.

Being wired into your own thing reminds us of Louis Wu problem, the Pierson’s Puppeteers and of course the excellent Ringworld series.

Every day, I get up and pray to Jah
And he decreases the number of clocks by exactly one
Everybody’s comin’ home for lunch these days
Last night there were skinheads on my lawn ~ “Take The Skinheads Bowling”, Camper Van Beethoven